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<div class="document" id="xxdiff-graphical-file-and-directories-comparator-and-merge-tool">
<h1 class="title">xxdiff: Graphical File And Directories Comparator And Merge Tool</h1>

<!-- -*- coding: utf-8 -*- -->
<div class="contents topic" id="table-of-contents">
<p class="topic-title">Table of Contents</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#description" id="id4">Description</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#features" id="id5">Features</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#unicode-and-inline-editing" id="id6">Unicode and Inline Editing</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#documentation" id="id7">Documentation</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#screenshots" id="id8">Screenshots</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#download" id="id9">Download</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#tools" id="id10">Tools</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#packages" id="id11">Packages</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#reporting-bugs" id="id12">Reporting Bugs</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#installation" id="id13">Installation</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#dependencies" id="id14">Dependencies</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#portability" id="id15">Portability</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#external-links" id="id16">External Links</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#copyright-and-license" id="id17">Copyright and License</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#author" id="id18">Author</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- 1  Description
  1.1  Features
    1.1.1  Unicode and Inline Editing
2  Documentation
  2.1  Screenshots
3  Download
  3.1  Tools
  3.2  Packages
4  Reporting Bugs
5  Installation
  5.1  Dependencies
  5.2  Portability
6  External Links
7  Copyright and License
8  Author -->
<div class="section" id="description">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">Description</a></h1>
<p>This is the official home of <strong>xxdiff</strong>, a graphical file and
directories comparator and merge tool.</p>
<p><strong>xxdiff</strong> is provided under the GNU GPL open source license. It has
reached stable state, and is known to run on many popular unices,
including IRIX, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX, DEC Tru64.  It has been
deployed inside many large organizations and is being actively
maintained by its author (Martin Blais).</p>
<div class="section" id="features">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">Features</a></h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Comparing <strong>two</strong> files, <strong>three</strong> files, or two <strong>directories</strong>
(shallow and recursive);</li>
<li><strong>Horizontal diffs</strong> highlighting;</li>
<li>Files can be <strong>merged</strong> interactively and resulting output
visualized and saved;</li>
<li>Has features to assist in performing <strong>merge reviews/policing</strong>;</li>
<li>Can <strong>unmerge CVS conflicts</strong> in automatically merged file and
display them as two files, to help resolve conflicts;</li>
<li>Uses <strong>external diff program</strong> to compute differences: works with
GNU diff, SGI diff and ClearCase's cleardiff, and any other diff
whose output is similar to those;</li>
<li>Fully customizable with a resource file;</li>
<li>Look-and-feel similar to Rudy Wortel's/SGI xdiff, it is desktop
agnostic (i.e. will work equally well with KDE or Gnome);</li>
<li>Features and output that ease integration with scripts.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>xxdiff</strong> was (and probably still is) tested daily in a merge
reviewing/policing context by more than 50 engineers at <a class="reference external" href="http://www.discreet.com">discreet</a>, and since this task is a
significant part of their development process, many of the features
are a direct result of suggestions from these people while the author
was working there.</p>
<div class="section" id="unicode-and-inline-editing">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">Unicode and Inline Editing</a></h3>
<p><strong>xxdiff</strong> does not support comparing files encoded with Unicode.
Also, it does not support inline editing of the diffed files.  If you
need these features, you could try emacs or Meld (although both of
these lack some of the most interesting features of xxdiff).</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="documentation">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">Documentation</a></h1>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/blais/xxdiff/blob/master/doc/xxdiff-doc.html">User's Manual</a>
<em>(user's manual, all features, FAQ)</em></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="doc/xxdiff-secrets.html">The almost secret nifty features of xxdiff</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="doc/xxdiff-integration.html">Integrating xxdiff with scripts</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="doc/xxdiff-scripts.html">Helper Scripts for xxdiff</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="CHANGES">CHANGES</a> <em>(news, recent changes, history)</em></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="TODO">TODO</a> <em>(future features, wishlist)</em></li>
</ul>
<div class="section" id="screenshots">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">Screenshots</a></h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="doc/screenshots/gallery/index.html">Screenshots</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="download">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">Download</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">Source code can be found the public Git repository, here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="reference external" href="http://github.com/blais/xxdiff">http://github.com/blais/xxdiff</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are no releases. Pick up the source for from Github.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">A complete Qt4 port (which works on the Mac) has been done by
Alexandre Feblot (alexandre dot feblot at gmail dot com). This forms
the basis for versions 4.x of xxdiff as of November 2010. Some notes
about the Mac OS X build:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On OSX, a Qt bug
(<a class="reference external" href="http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-9271">http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-9271</a>) affects
rendering performance. As a workaround you can use the much faster
&quot;raster&quot; graphics engine by either</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">using the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">--graphicssystem</span></tt> raster option</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">defining this environment variable in your terminal:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=raster
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
<p>This engine has a couple of drawbacks (it will not refresh the
display during window resizing, and will dump warning lines when
opening native OSX dialogs like colors chooser or file selection
dialogs), but it's worth coping with them anyway.</p>
</blockquote>
</li>
<li><p class="first">A recent Mac OS X binary build is available for download here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="reference external" href="http://furius.ca/downloads/xxdiff/releases/macosx/">http://furius.ca/downloads/xxdiff/releases/macosx/</a></p>
</blockquote>
</li>
<li><p class="first">An recent Windows 7 port of version 4.0 has been done by Rene J.V. Bertin
(it's ifdef'ed).</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">An old Windows build for 2.9 (with some minor bugs) and based on the
qt3 version can be found here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="reference external" href="http://furius.ca/downloads/xxdiff/releases/windows/">http://furius.ca/downloads/xxdiff/releases/windows/</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>No support is offered though. Someone should probably port the newer
qt4 code to Windows though, that would be worthwhile.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="section" id="tools">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">Tools</a></h2>
<p><strong>xxdiff</strong> comes with a bunch of wrapper Python scripts that invoke xxdiff in
creative ways.  The author has been using these for a long time now and decided
for version 3.0 to clean them up and make them a little more generic so everyone
can use them.  As of version 3.2, the standalone scripts have been refactored a
great deal, to share code together and to make them more stable.  All this code
is now distributed with xxdiff, in an <tt class="docutils literal">xxdiff</tt> Python package, which you can
leverage to build your own file transformation scripts around xxdiff.</p>
<p>See the document <a class="reference external" href="doc/xxdiff-scripts.html">Helper Scripts for xxdiff</a> for full
details.</p>
<p>The scripts are available in the xxdiff distribution.  To install them and the
accompanying Python package, use the standard distutils procedure:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
su -  # before root
cd xxdiff-3.x
python setup.py install
</pre>
<p>Other tools can be found in the distribution under the tools/ directory (CVS,
ClearCase, etc.).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="packages">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">Packages</a></h2>
<p>Packages are available for some specific operating systems. Here are links to
the relevant pages.  The author does not publish binaries anymore.</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.sourcepole.ch/sources/software/xxdiff/">Linux / Debian package</a>
(provided by Tomas Pospisek)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.geek.co.il/RPMS/xxdiff">Linux / Mandrake package (1)</a>
(maintained by Oded Arbel)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.roberto.foglietta.name/pub/xxdiff">Linux / Mandrake package (2)</a>
(maintained by Roberto A. Foglietta)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://timeoff.wsisiz.edu.pl/rpms.html#xxdiff">Linux / Fedore Core (1)</a>
(maintained by Marcin Zajączkowski)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?xxdiff-3.1">Linux / Gentoo port</a>
(in the dev-utils category)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.openbsd.org/ports.html">OpenBSD / ports tree</a> (maintained by Dan
Weeks, available in the ports tree)</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://freeware.sgi.com">IRIX / Tardist package</a> (provided by the
SGI freeware team (version may be lagging behind))</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="reporting-bugs">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12">Reporting Bugs</a></h1>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/blais/xxdiff/issues">Reporting Bugs</a>
<em>(bugs and feature requests)</em></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="installation">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13">Installation</a></h1>
<div class="section" id="dependencies">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14">Dependencies</a></h2>
<p>Build dependencies are:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Qt-4.5 or higher</li>
<li>a C++ compiler, flex and yacc</li>
</ul>
<p>Runtime dependencies are:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Qt-4.5 or higher</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="portability">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15">Portability</a></h2>
<p>xxdiff is known to build and work on a great majority of UNIX platforms where Qt
works, including Mac OS X.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="external-links">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id16">External Links</a></h1>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Other file comparison programs at <a class="reference external" href="http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/File_Management/File_Comparison/">Google directory</a>,
<a class="reference external" href="http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/File_Management/File_Comparison/">DMOZ</a></li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://furius.ca">Author's Homepage</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="copyright-and-license">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id17">Copyright and License</a></h1>
<p>Copyright (C) 2001-2004  Martin Blais.  All Rights Reserved.</p>
<p>This code is distributed under the <a class="reference external" href="COPYING">GNU General Public License</a>;</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="author">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id18">Author</a></h1>
<p>Martin Blais &lt;<a class="reference external" href="mailto:blais&#64;furius.ca">blais&#64;furius.ca</a>&gt;</p>
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